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+--- Thread: The Great PBM Race to Nowhere (/showthread.php?tid=774)
The Great PBM Race to Nowhere - GrimFinger - 09-18-2013
I often write about irony in many different contexts, and when dealing with many different things. I firmly believe that irony is, indeed, one of the greatest blessings from on high.
Today is no exception.
Apparently, site user Smurphboogie and I are in a race, of some sorts, to populate the PBM Wiki with tidbits of PBM-related information. I'm not sure who's winning, but when I look at the Recent Changes page on the PBM Wiki, the wiki keeps awarding him all kinds of points of some sort for his wiki entries. Hundreds and hundreds of points! Clearly, I am going to have to up the ante - but, where to find the time?
On a more serious note, I would like to take this opportunity to extend my personal thanks to Smurphboogie for becoming such a wiki worker bee, growing the wiki for the benefit of others, one entry and one edit at a time.
What does any of this have to do with irony?
Well, after checking to see how the PBM Wiki is progressing, while still in a state of informational infancy, for some reason that remains a mystery even to myself, I got to checking the front page of the PlayByMail.Net website for a link to a Hyborian War related site that I put online a number of years back, one called The Hyborian Tome.
Apparently, there was no link in the PBM Hivemind section of the front page for my own PBM-related website. Go figure! If that's not irony, then I don't know what is.
I titled this editorial, "The Great PBM Race to Nowhere." Why? Well, because that's what it feels like, this tit-for-tat posting to the PBM Wiki thing that is going on between Smurphboogie and myself. Now, for all that I know, he may not even be aware that there is a race going on, much less that he's in it, or that he may very well be in the lead. Fancy that for a double dose of irony, on this day!
Somewhere in all of this, there's likely a point that I want to make and underscore. That point is that I have posted more to the PBM Wiki, of late, as a direct response to Smurphboogie's own postings there. What it boils down to is that his postings have sparked a bit of a competition, competitive spirit, if you will.
In issue # 100 of Flagship magazine, in an article titled, "A Founder's Memories," founding editor Nick Palmer wrote, "The snag was that this success rapidly generated competition. I have always believed that PBM has never been large enough to support more than one major magazine for long, so I saw every rival as a deadly threat."
Nick Palmer went on in that same article to say, "On the other hand, I have to say that I was consistently fairly nasty to our competitors, because I felt that it was basically them or us. Every little mistake or delay in rival magazines' issues was faithfully reported in Flagship, in the polite manner of The Times reporting that a small newspaper in the Orkneys seemed to be struggling - we did hope they'd get better soon. 'You use classy wording to make yourself look good, but you are running us down at every opportunity,' wrote one angry rival privately. I'm afraid that's exactly what I was doing. 50% of magazines fold in their first year, and if you don't fight your corner in a competitive market you eventually go down."
All well and dandy, but the PBM market has long since ceased to have even a single magazine of note covering the market in question. Far worse than that, though, is the seeming absence of competitive spirit on the part of what were once proud contenders for every PBM gamer that they could get their hands on. I find myself wondering whether PBM"s Old Guard has lost its fighting spirit, which was a competitive edge that transcended the bounds of the postal genre, itself.
When PBM's proverbial big guns went quiet, is anybody's guess. What happened to the long procession and glorious parade of new PBM games that was part and parcel of the PBM industry for so very long?
That competition is effectively gone. The PBM industry has grown complacent. Sure, some of the commercial PBM companies are still around. Rather than bulls raging with competitive spirit, though, they've allowed themselves to become cows content with grazing in the pastures of what's left.
In Tolkien's writings, we learn of something called the Flame Imperishable, the Secret Fire. It was Eru, aka Ilúvatar, that possessed the Flame Imperishable, that possessed this creative essence. The irony, as I see it, is that, where the PBM industry, itself, is concerned, is that the fire of competition was not possessed by one, alone - but was free for one and all to possess.
The Internet, like the Borg, appeared on the horizon, one day, and quickly began to assimilate everything in sight. If you can't beat them, join them, became the apparent battle cry in PBM circles.
Such a pity.
Smurphboogie and I are in the Great PBM Race to Nowhere. Why nowhere? Well, because there's no real finish line to be found. It is a work unending, this PBM Wiki. The PBM industry could be a work unending, also. It doesn't have to have an end.
The competitive spirit that once upon a time ago distinguished the adherents to the PBM cause doesn't have to die, either.
Nick Palmer closed his article in issue # 100 of Flagship with these words, "I look forward to issue 200."
Unfortunately for both Nick Palmer and his beloved Flagship, that PBM magazine that he, himself, had launched all those many years before, Flagship struck an obstacle at issue # 131. The good captain, Carol Mulholland, fell ill with health issues, and the ship's passengers and crew have apparently abandoned ship.
Nick Palmer spoke of the "amazing creativity" of the PBM hobby. Where is that very same amazing creativity, now?
Issue # 100 of Flagship was the December 2002/January 2003 issue of that publication. Thus, a full decade ago, Flagship's founding editor described the PBM scene, as he saw it at that point in time.
"The US market has basically disappeared, with a few exceptions, but the UK scene continues, with PBM merging steadily into PBEM and Flagship recognised as the stable centre of the 'fleet', just as we'd hoped back in issue 1."
I am heartened by a couple of e-mails from Flying Buffalo's Rick Loomis that were awaiting me in my in-box, this morning. My apologies to Rick Loomis for the verbosity of my response to his e-mail from last night, but in order to publish a new PBM magazine from scratch, I think that my propensity for verbosity may well ultimately prove to be an asset, rather than a liability, where this undertaking is concerned.
The temptation is great, of course, to reserve my verbosity for the first issue of the new PBM magazine, but that would be akin to cutting off my nose to spite my face.
The fate of Paper Mayhem, Flagship, and other PBM magazines from the past are all a matter of factual record, by now. It's time for someone else to hoist the PBM Colors, once more! It's time to advance the cause, anew!
With allies on both sides of the Atlantic, we chart a new course straight ahead into the future!
All aboard!!
RE: The Great PBM Race to Nowhere - Steve Tierney - 09-18-2013
Where is the imagination now? Well, it's still here for those of us still involved.
DungeonWorld had its Fifteenth birthday party in July this year. It's been growing consistently for that full time and shows no sign of slowing down. It has more commercial characters this year than it has ever had before. Like some other games that have stood the test of time, things are going well.
We don't call what we do "PBM" anymore though. The only snail mail players we have are in prison. We call it Turn-Based Gaming.
The hobby has provided me with a full-time career for two decades, has bought my house and fed my kids and given me a very great deal of pleasure providing entertainment for some of the most creative customers in the world.
Some have fallen by the wayside. Some are so stagnant that they may as well have. But there are new things happening too, and new ideas that are clearly part of the path that Rick Loomis and Kevin Cropper and Nicky Palmer and others developed (in their own ways) all those years ago.
It's been a blast, and its far from over.